I believe Goblins are their own race, whereas orcs are 'tortured elves and men', as Saruman puts it. They have to be different races on a t least some level, because Saruman says he has perfected a mix of the two when he is talking to the first Uruk-Hai.

It seems like Tolkien messes with terminology often, as Wikipedia goes on to say large goblins are called hobgoblins at times. It also says "orc" in Tolkien's mythology is a Hobbit's name for a goblin, so that word is usually used when the reader is supposed to be seeing things from the Hobbits' point of view.

Still from Wikipedia:

The Uruk-Hai were all bred only from orcs by Saruman for specialized tasks. He crossbred orcs and men also to create orc-men or half-orcs. Half-orcs were seen at Isengard in the books.

Ross_Varn wrote:Either I'm confusing the Simarillion and The Hobbit again, or after Gandalf and the party split up, he actually met up with several other of this wizard buddies and went to confront the darkness at the core of Mirkwood, which was actually guess who? Yeah. The Dark Lord was just chilling there. I suspect we'll see a /little/ bit of that.

The Hobbit wrote:"I don't understand," said Thorin, and Bilbo felt he would have liked to say the same. The explanation did not seem to explain. "Your grandfather," said the wizard slowly and grimly, "gave the map to his son for safety before he went to the mines of Moria... how your father got there I don't know, but I found him a prisoner in the dungeons of the Necromancer." "Whatever were you doing there?" asked Thorin with a shudder, and all the dwarves shivered. "Never you mind. I was finding things out, as usual; and a nasty dangerous business it was. Even I, Gandalf only just escaped. I tried to save your father, but it was too late. He was witless and wandering, and had forgotten almost everything except the map and the key."

The Silmarillion wrote:To this Curunir (Saruman) now assented, desiring that Sauron should be thrust from Dol Guldur, which was nigh to the River (where the Ring was lost), and should have leisure to search there no longer. Therefore, for the last time, he aided the Council, and they put forth their strength; and they assailed Dol Guldur, and drove Sauron from his hold, and Mirkwood for a brief while was made wholesome again...

The Hobbit wrote:...It was in this way that he learned where Gandalf had been to; for he overheard the words of the wizard to Elrond. It appeared that Gandalf had been to a great council of the white wizards, masters of lore and good magic; and that they had at last driven the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood.

Didn't read the whole thing about the Orcs, but this is basically what it comes down to:

The official distinction between 'orcs' and 'goblins' wasn't explicitly made in the book. There's talk of Uruks (large orcs) and Snaga (small orcs, slaves). Those living in Moria are more commonly referred to as Goblins, and the Black Uruks of Mordor are not the same as the Uruk-Hai Saruman uses, even though they're comparable. Evidence of this is the two orcs who kill each other in the book are implicated to have fought in the war of the Second age, and one of them is an Uruk, so Uruks were around before Saruman created the Uruk-Hai. The movies and games made them separate races and also made the distinction pretty well IMO since it makes sense goblins and orcs would not be the same and would be different simply because they lived under other conditions. Even though they were descendent from the same 'source', thousands of years passed, enough to make them distinctive. Not all orcs are tortured elves, either.

As for Saruman, in the movie he says he's crossed goblins and orcs, in the book they're not entirely sure what it is he did as I recall it. It is implicated he crossed Orcs with the wildmen he also uses in his army, but it's not really expanded upon how he would do that. Suffice to say I don't want to think about it too much, but the way I see it a wizard of sufficient power could create these creatures indirectly as well as directly to some degree.

It hardly says it all. There's no page on black uruks on the whole goddarn wiki, while in the book when they are attacked in Moria Boromir I think it was clearly says something along the lines of '... and there's black uruks from Mordor, too!' There's still a distinction between the large orcs from Mordor and the Uruk-hai. The Uruk-hai are described as looking more alike to men while the Mordor Uruks have long legs and really long arms and are almost as tall as men. These Uruks are also shown driving the Snaga-orcs like cattle to the battlefield. I find none of this information on the wiki, the closest thing being a non-canonical page on 'morannon orcs'. BFME II got closer by referring to them as 'Black Orcs'.

You gotta be careful with wikis because anyone can put anything there and mistakes aren't always rectified / there's not always a lot of dialogue between people editing the same pages. Lotr also becomes increasingly difficult to wikify simply because of the (unavoidable) inconsistencies between the book and movie. Not to mention the boatload of canonical and semi-canonical sources there are, like fe the video games that make wargs and wolves different, while in the books there's again no real explicit distinction (though I think they interpreted it well by making Wargs different from normal wolves). I just tend to go with the information I get from the books because everything after that is prone to misinterpretation and we're really talking small paragraphs and details here which I'm pretty sure most designers don't know about / didn't have time for. I'm not an 'expert' either (I read the Silmarrilion but haven't finished 'Durin's Children' or whatever it was called) but I read Lotr once when I was still a kid and a few years back reread it and paid close attention to these things 'cos the movies had gotten me confused. The edition I have also has a lot of pages with extra information, amongst it a huge history of all of Gondor's kings and stewards and what they did. It's pretty impressive.

My high school physics teacher was all about LoTR. He told our class if we could stump him with a LoTRs question he'd give us 10 points extra credit. No one could stump him.

I read LoTR when I was 14 and I wasn't too into it (I was reading the Magic: The Gathering books at that time and I thought LoTR didn't have enough action) I just hope Lego can give us a lot of different orcs/goblins/ Uruk-hai minifigs to make more sweet fantasy armies. I also want more dwarves, I also missed out on the Orc/Dwarf Castle line from a few years back.

I respect LotR as the foundation for, y'know, more or less all of modern fantasy that it is, but I'm not much of a fan. I read the books (my school library had it in one bigass volume, so I grabbed it off them when they were chucking out old books [to make room for annoying vampire BS, no doubt]) and saw the movies, and its good for what it is, but I wouldn't run a D&D campaign in Middle Earth or anything.